Vom Kommunisten zum Unternehmer, vom Kombinat zum eigenen Betrieb? Mit dem Beitritt der DDR in den Geltungsbereich des Grundgesetzes wurde auch das System der »sozialen Marktwirtschaft« übernommen. Doch woher sollten in einem vormals sozialistischen Land die Unternehmer kommen? Die Akzeptanz...

Subjective well-being, China, frustrated achievers, trust, anomie. - Happiness in China plummeted between 1990 and 2000 despite rapid economic growth. This finding contradicts the notion that income growth leads to gains in happiness. In sociology, people might mentally benefit from social trust...

This paper analyzes, using country-level panel data from transition economies and Latin America, the impact of labor market institutions on informal economic activity. The measure of informal economic activity is taken from Schneider et al. (2010), the most comprehensive study to date. The data...

Since the beginning of transition in 1990 from a centrally planned to a market oriented economy, the performance of Poland's economy has been outstanding if we take GDP growth as our measure. In our opinion it is not specific reforms that can explain this performance but the radical ("big bang")...

This paper summarizes the evolution of labor markets and labor market institutions and policies in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe as well as of Central Asia over the last two decades. The main focus is on the evolution of labor market institutions, which are among candidate...